My formal education started before my formal schooling began – one way to keep hyperactive inventor under control in difficult times. My father found the best teacher he could find in the locality for my fellow students and me. The teacher – now Ashan (Guru) – had to walk several Kilometers to reach us students. The teacher was not young and handsome but old and wise – guess older than my grandfather.
The Kalari (school) was the Varanda of an unused building. The children sat on the floor and wrote the letters of Malayalam alphabet in fine sand collected from the riverbed with the index finger. The Ashan wrote each letter in the sand and the children about four years old traced the letters with their index finger till they master it – write the letter without prompting.
The day of expectations – the day of initiation – when the learning begins arrived. At the appointed time each child sits in the lap of the Ashan and was helped to write in a plate of uncooked rice the initial letters one writes ‘Hari Sree Ganapathye Nama, Thampuran Thunakya, en gurve sharanam‘.
Very reverently with both the hands the student offers Beetle leaf and Arrack nut to the Ashan. You are initiated. I was accepted as the 1162 disciple of Puthettu Ashan as Ashan was known popularly. The learning began the next day at 9.00 A.M.
The Ashan and the students all reached all days on time. At noon the children had a lunch break. Ashan had no lunch. He sat in the Kalari except if a parent invited him to have lunch in a student’s house. Ashan was frugal in his ways and Gandhian in his attire. There was divinity about him. Everybody respected Ashan. My father probably respected him most. They became friends and remained friends all their lives.
Ashan was invited for lunch a few times in my house. I conspicuously remember on my day of graduation Ashan coming for lunch as my grandfather also was there. Before Lunch, my father gave a Mundu to my grandfather and my grandfather gave it to me to give it to Ashan. Gurudakshina. One does that with utmost reverence and is etched in memory and becomes brighter with passing of time most of all when the parents keep narrating it.
In the evening the graduation ceremony was almost identical to initiation except that the student wrote all letters of the alphabet, A to Z in a manner of speaking, on his own. I completed the Kalari education as the 1162 – as told by Ashan to my father at that time- disciple of Puthettu Ashan. This happened more than half century ago.
My destiny changed from school to college with a purposeful gap. Every time, I went home for holidays, I would ask my father about Ashan. One of those holidays before I started my undergraduate studies, I was told that Ashan was living about 30 KMs from my place. I sought out Ashan with the help of many people one morning about 8.00 A.M. in late April. It was a surprise of surprises for both of us.
Ashan and I had breakfast together in a restaurant; travelled together by bus. While waiting for the bus Ashan recited a Sanskrit sloga for me and translated, “Vidya is like lamp that is lit; one can light a thousand lamps from that and use for removing darkness and it does not lose anything.”
Every true guru in his lifetime chooses a few and blesses them. That blessing is eternal and profound and many times not even verbalized. One has to be fortunate to be blessed by the guru. It is given unto you. And it shall remain so. Accept it with humility and make every effort to become worthy of it. Ashan was always proud of me. He mentioned that to my father practically during all their meetings.
Finally, in a busy and noisy town square, I paid my little gurudakshina and we bid farewell to each other affectionately. I had taken a photograph of Asan. That frame never appeared on the film. Then I knew the memory Ashan is to be perpetuated in other ways than a photograph. After that I completed B.Sc in Maths, M.Sc in Maths, Post Graduate B.Sc in Applied Computer Sc, – all from Pune University, MFM form NMIMS, Mumbai University and Ph.D. in Computer Science from BITS Pilani. My Ph.D. thesis and a few original papers are part dedicated to ‘my ashan (Guru) Puthettu Velayudan Nair who gave me the foundation’.
And Puthettu Ashan lives on …
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